Community Benefits report that served as a basis for Wireless Minneapolis contract negotiations with US Internet. Financing USI Wireless, the private partner, will fund, build, own, and manage the wireless network upon the City’s existing fiber optic network. In addition, USI Wireless will also retail the service. The City, the public partner, will own the fiber and serve as an anchor tenant for network services. The City has committed to the payment of an US$ 1.25 million annual fee as anchor tenant for wireless service usage. This represents a savings over the City’s current Internet costs and an effective opportunity for city’s mobile workforce dispatched on territory. The City will allow the private partner to use City its facilities including buildings, light poles, traffic signals and other assets to mount wireless equipment throughout the city’s 59 square miles area. The private partner will fund, build and operate the wholesale and retail wireless network. The network will be made available to residents, business and visitors. USI Wireless will pay a fee to use City assets and will retail the service. USI wireless will provide ubiquitous outdoor municipal, commercial, residential and roaming wireless broadband coverage and 90 percent indoor coverage for multi‐family and high rise residential units at speeds of one to three megabits per second. Some have questioned the Minneapolis, MN, business model as being an anomaly in regards to large scale municipal wireless deployments, based on the fact that the municipal revenue commitment of $1.25 mln per year represents 124 percent of the total deployment costs20. However, it appears that the authors of this analysis do not take into account the fact that the City decided that the $1.25 mln investment represented a cost savings over previous Internet access that they were receiving. In addition, as discussed later in Section 3.1, it is municipal financial commitments that have been the key to success with regards to municipal projects. None of the other cities cited in the analysis made any financial commitments, and thus their projects have gone nowhere. Minneapolis has and they are experiencing success. Regulation The network operates in the 2.4 GHz unlicensed frequency band. Conclusions As of August 2008, the network has 10,000 users and has reached the break‐even point, according to a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
20
See Civitium’s analysis (http://www.civitium.com/Civitium‐MBMA‐Report.pdf ), page 8.
IDB/MIF 101